Are VIA and ULi Going to Adopt SLI?

According to this article at Digitimes, it looks like both VIA and ULi are going to obtain rights to use dual-graphics technology from both ATI and NVIDIA. You'll remember that PC Perspective was one of the proponents of the SLI technology from NVIDIA being available to other chipset vendors, but at the time, NVIDIA claimed it was all a quality control issue. Perhaps this shows that it was really a money issue after all?

Taiwan-based chipset makers including VIA Technologies and ULi expect to obtain patent rights for dual-graphics platforms from ATI Technologies and Nvidia, according to sources at the makers.

ATI and Nvidia stated that they are still in discussions with Taiwan chipset companies and declined to provide details before any decisions are made. VIA and ULi also refused to comment.

ATI's forthcoming 90nm R520graphics chip will support dual graphics cards using the company's Multi-Rendering platform, and is slated for delivery in the latter half of May at the earliest, according to the company. ATI's Multi-Rendering solution is positioned to compete with Nvidia's Scalable-Link-Interface (SLI) technology.